


The Wedding

by bleak_midwinter



Series: My Love [3]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 14:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17727209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleak_midwinter/pseuds/bleak_midwinter
Summary: It's Elise's wedding day and Ada decides that now is the right time to confront her about their relationship.





	The Wedding

I’m glad when my mother decides to leave me alone, although with no distractions I seem unable to tear my eyes from my reflection in the mirror. I look beautiful. The white dress, beaded from top to bottom sits perfectly on my body. The veil, delicately laced and beaded makes me look like a real bride, one that little girls wish they could look like on their wedding day. I look beautiful, but I don’t look like me. I don’t feel like me either, the whole charade seems cruel and deceitful, a show so that I can fit in; live the life a woman is meant to.

It’s not that I don’t care for the man waiting for me at the end of the altar, he’s kind, handsome, funny and he promises a life where I’ll wish for nothing. It’s just that I don’t love him. Of course, I respect him and I like him, I enjoy spending time in his company, but I know he loves me in a way I can never reciprocate and to stand with him and make promises in front of God makes my stomach turn.

“Hello,” a small voice says from behind me. So entranced with my thoughts I hadn’t noticed the door behind me open, but I don’t need to turn around to know who’s standing there.

“Hello Ada,” I mumble, wiping away the few errant tears that have collected in my lashes.

“Congratulations,” she says, placing her bag down on one of the tables. I can tell she’s trying to look confident so she can rally herself to say whatever it is she came here to say, but it serves only to make me angry; that she can appear, minutes before my wedding after a year of not speaking to me once she returned to America, seems such an incredibly Shelby thing to do that the anger I thought was long forgotten rears it head again.

“Oh fuck off,” I spit, my words seeming to come as such a shock that she has to take a few seconds to compose herself.

“I’m sorry, that probably wasn’t the best thing to say,” she replies eventually.

“No. It wasn’t. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you,” she replies, regaining her Shelby arrogance as if nothing had happened.

“The time for _seeing_ me was a year ago, after I stormed out of Tommy’s office when he threatened my family. The time to _see_ me was any point between then and when you fucked off back to America and refused to deal with me over the phone so Tommy fucking sacked me! Not today! Not now.”

Despite my anger, I can’t help the tears that begin to cascade down my face and with my pain laid so bear in front of her, Ada breaks too.

“I just… I thought I was doing the right thing,” she whispers, her eyes on her fingers as she fiddles with the skin around her nail, flopping onto the same table she placed her bag.

“Well you weren’t.”

“That look in your eye when you stormed out of Tommy’s office, I knew you thought different of me. That we wouldn’t be the same, and that was my fault… Well, my family’s fault. And I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you because I was hurt and angry, at myself, and I couldn’t bear to see you look at me that way again.”

“It’s too late now Ada.”

She flies from her seat and takes my hands. “It’s not though, you aren’t married yet. Move to America with me, no one would bat an eyelid that I have a lodger. We could be together, properly.”

I pull my hands away, her delusion is almost comical but I can’t bring myself to laugh. “That’s not going to work Ada.”

“Why not? We’ll make it work. I love you.”

At my silence she reaches for my hands again, but I move from her reach, the thought of her warm skin against mine stirring conflicting feelings.

“Do you love me?” she asks, her voice small as if she’s scared of what I’ll say.

There is no answer that comes to me. Once upon a time I had loved Ada and she’d broken my heart, but seeing her in front of me now, hearing her voice after so long makes me want to pull her to me and not let go. As I glance away from her, my veil falls into my eyeline I remember the kind and gentle man waiting nervously at the end of the aisle, the normal life I could have with him, the life without violence and guns, without accusations of treatory that get families killed, and my answer is obvious, regardless of its truthfulness.

“No Ada. I don’t. Not anymore.”

For a second she seems as if she’s about to cry, but as quick as it appears, it’s gone and she straightens herself. “Yeah? Well you certainly don’t fucking love _him_! And don’t lie to me and say you do, because I know you. I know that you can’t love him, not like you should. Not like you’re supposed to love the person you marry!”

She’s right and we both know it, but pretending she’s wrong seems to be the best option for me now. Perhaps if I say it enough times it’ll become true.

“I do love him, he’s a good man.”

“Oh fuck off, you’ll be fucking miserable and you know it!”

“Maybe. But you know we were never going to be forever. How could we be? And maybe, regardless of how much it killed me, maybe that day in Tommy’s office was the right time to end it. Before either of us destroyed our chances at a normal life.”

Her eyes soften as I speak, she’s knows what I’m saying is right even if her stubbornness won’t allow her to admit it outright.

“So this is it?” she mumbles.

“This is it.”

Even from this distance I can see the tears well in her eyes and the wobble of her bottom lip. She composes herself though, enough to take the brooch off her coat and pin it to my own chest.

“It matches your flowers perfectly don’t you think?” she muses, handing me my bouquet so I can see the entire ensemble. “It can be your something borrowed.”

“Thank you,” I say, running my fingers over the glittering pin. Although we both know we’ll never meet again for me to return it.


End file.
